Uzzah:Imagine a very tiny wormhole opens, causing a complete set of blueprints for the LHC to fall back in time and land on the desks of the world's foremost engineers of the moment.

What would engineers of the 1930s make of them? Of the 1830s? Of the 1630s?

The electronic schematics would be indecipherable in any of those eras. I'd guess that the way the hardware is being used in the detectors would be equally indecipherable, but I wouldn't bet on it for the 1930s though.

SJKebab:The electronic schematics would be indecipherable in any of those eras. I'd guess that the way the hardware is being used in the detectors would be equally indecipherable, but I wouldn't bet on it for the 1930s though.

I've untangled some ugly cabling knots in my time. Like shiat you wouldn't believe, almost wrapped around the room and behind panels no lone man could lift. What they strung up at CERN? That's not science, that's farking art. That's a museum for how to do it right the first time. You farking lazy asses.

lohphat:Meanwhile in Amerika we can't maintain our infrastructure, upgrade our rail systems, repair our roads, and have to hitch rides on Russian rockets to get into space.

We've forgotten how to lead the modern developed world.

I disagree! We didn't forget anything. We just realized it's simpler to subcontract to a cheaper workforce than to put it together yourself. We didn't forget, we got lazy. There's a distinction.

KoolerThanJesus:Just to state the obvious, but clearly quite a few really smart people were involved in this.

It's the most complex machine ever built, so you are correct. The ATLAS detector is the largest scientific instrument ever built, by any measure you care to use, volume, dimensions, weight etc etc. The nice thing about it being physics equipment is a lot of the engineering is actually done by the physicists themselves.

"Commence primary ignition!" "Dammit, Bernard, how many times do we have to tell you, this is NOT the Death Star!" "...TK421, get back to your post." "I swear to God, Bernard, I will find a way to put you in the path of that beam."

Strange that they need such a complex bit of technology like the ATLAS pixel detector to determine if Emma Watson nude photos are legit. Seems like there are lots of qualified human pixel detectors who have seen many 'shops in the before.

/I kid because I don't understand much of anything they're doing at CERN, but the engineering alone is amazing to behold.

gingerjet:lohphat: Meanwhile in Amerika we can't maintain our infrastructure, upgrade our rail systems, repair our roads, and have to hitch rides on Russian rockets to get into space.

To be fair - neither can Europe.

No, "The South" of Europe can't.

I travel to Europe frequently and the standard of living is much higher for the average citizen than ours is. Trams and trains are frequent and reliable for the most part, the intercity trains run at 300kph, the roads don't resemble goat paths, people don't have to go bankrupt or lose their family home or job when they get sick.

They're *civilized* and understand the concept of the common good and sacrifice as opposed to the US credo of "fark you, I got mine."

On a serious note, that collider is amazing. Stunning. Breath-taking. Its 17 miles long. Completely packed with all of the world's most cutting edge and high tech... whatever. Besides the incredible length, the sheer size in every other dimension is hard to comprehend. It's all just too big and amazing and powerful to have any bearing for its opulence among anything I encounter regularly. And the icing on the cake is that it was ALL created just to satisfy curiosity and ensure that something was real. Something that we were already fairly certain existed and behaved in a known manner, we just wanted proof. Hell, I can't even wrap my head around how small the sub-atomic particle they found is itself. Everything from the device to the goal to the speeds and energies involved is so far beyond the realm of all man-kind.... or at least it used to be.

And surely it was for the last 40,000 years. You gotta hand it to today's monkeys, they have become very tricky monkeys. God bless them, it's all so splendiferous.